Well, it’s happened, and all as predicted. Exactly 63 days after mating, our Working Cocker Spaniel, Darcy has presented us with a litter of puppies, now just over a week old. Unlike the last time we had puppies from a previous beloved pet, these pups arrived at a decent time rather than in the early hours normally favoured by mammals.
In the run up to the due date the only outward signs were an initial swelling of her teats a few weeks after her encounter with the sire, the redoubtable Tod. Then not much, except a slight increase in her girth. From day 59 she started getting noticeably wider and her behaviour changed.
For a couple of weeks now she had been particularly clingy, not straying far from us on walks and showing precious little interest in pheasants nestling in the hedgerows. Our good friend who originally had gifted us Darcy from his bitch’s litter, kindly lent us his whelping box fashioned by his own hands from some stout plywood and what look like broom handles. Measuring four feet square and about eighteen inches high this box would be Darcy’s, and eventually her pups’, home for the next couple of months.
One of the biggest fears is that, especially when the pups are small, their mother can roll on them and crush them against the side of the box with sometimes fatal results. The broom handles, slotted along the sides about three inches from the ground help prevent this by giving the pups an escape lane preventing squashing if mum does roll on them. We h.